


Effigy

by bluebottle762



Category: Vinland Saga (Manga)
Genre: Dream Sex, Historical References, M/M, Post Prologue, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-18 12:40:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21611044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebottle762/pseuds/bluebottle762
Summary: Canute feels trapped in his life, and wishes desperately for someone to know him. Anyone- but perhaps especially the one person he can no longer have.
Relationships: Canute/Thorfinn (Vinland Saga)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 59





	Effigy

He can feel the ghost of his long hair at the back of his neck as he lifts his hands to cup Thorfinn’s cheek to run a thumb over the bone. He knows it’s Thorfinn he’s looking at, for who else would it ever conceivably be? He’s older, although the details of his aging are blurred by uncertainty. How old would he be now? Twenty two? Twenty three, even? Canute was never sure how much time separated them, but he knows it’s not enough to matter. 

Thorfinn’s hair is shaggy and wild, but golden still, just as Canute remembers it. His eyes are a perfect soft, warm brown that makes Canute still when they focus their attention on him. His skin is softer than it ever was in life, but what Canute wants most from him right now is softness.

“I want you.” He murmurs, his voice too deep and tired, belying of a soul weighed down by time and harrowing complexity. “I always want you. I’m sorry.”

For the Thorfinn in the dream, the stunted apology is enough, although it shouldn’t be. Canute knows it shouldn’t be. He wraps his arms around him in a tight embrace, fearful that if he lets go of him again, he would lose him even in dreams. 

It isn’t healthy, and he knows; clinging so hard for so long to one boy he may not have even loved when he was but a teenager. A boy, wild and damaged, who is now a man unknown to him. It hurts, it hurts enough to burn but what else is left to him which is truly his? His crown, his formalised social circle, his marriage, and no doubt his heirs when he has them─ none of them are Canute’s. All of it belongs to the king, that great figure who he will forever live inside of, like hand within a glove. The king moves as he moves, just as his lips move to form the words the king speaks. 

He does not like Emma. In truth, she frightens him, her agenda always at the forefront of her every motive, every action primed and purposeful. She exhausts him, and privately he is thankful for being ten years her junior, as it offers better odds that she will predeceased him. Here at least, in dreams, she cannot touch him.

Canute’s hands travel across the clothed back of his imaginary Thorfinn, feeling out the planes and angles of him through the fabric. The masculine landscape of him is comforting and enticing, and he wants nothing more than to strip him bare and marvel at this experience he may not have. Just the idea of the heat and weight of an unfamiliar cock in his hand is enough to send him reeling, so starved has he made himself. 

He remembers fucking Thorfinn just the once in Gainsborough, no more than a week before he sealed his fate. Before then, he had been truly virginal, having never kissed or held another tenderly. If it was the same for Thorfinn, he didn’t know, as he had never found the moment to ask. Perhaps Canute had been the first, or just one more to have used him in that way. He hoped for the former, as Thorfinn had seemed just as inexperienced as he was. 

“Will you let me fuck you?” He asked softly, cupping Thorfinn’s jaw to angle his face upwards to kiss him before he had a chance to respond. He did not taste of anything in particular, even when Canute’s tongue found its way into his mouth, lavishing languid little strokes across Thorfinn’s tongue in turn whilst revelling in the addictively slick sensation of it. Gripping Thorfinn’s upper arms tightly, he drew him closer still, pressing forward until no space remained between them. He wanted Thorfinn to feel him, to understand that he was no longer that soft boy he had plucked off the battlefield, but a hardened king. With a subtle rocking of his hips, he sought to grind up against him in order to bring himself to full hardness.

In the logic of dreams, he did not strip Thorfinn, so much as their clothing melted away as it became increasingly irrelevant to this fantasy. He’d fucked other men since his one meaningful night with Thorfinn, although any semblance of a relationship was out of the question. They were never men of importance, always around his age or a little younger. Servants, slaves, they all served their purpose, both satisfying him and leaving him drained and hollow as he forever envisioned the one man he could never have again. If Thorfinn hadn’t struck out, and instead remained subdued and calm, then perhaps Canute could have kept him. An official bodyguard was a good role in which to conceal a lover, after all. But alas, he had struck out, and so he had been forced to send Thorfinn away, sold into slavery and unlikely to ever clap eyes on Canute ever again.

Canute pushed and rolled with the inexact replica, the regular rules of space and gravity becoming an insignificant hinderance. He did not move like Thorfinn had done, there was no uncertainty or unexpected tensing, and neither did he off comment or retort where the real Thorfinn most likely would have. In this he became more like Canute subsequent experiences, pliant and submissive as befit the rank and station that Canute himself despised. Perhaps he lacked the creativity to muster up a more lifelike Thorfinn, or maybe he was simply afraid of the rejection that might follow if he did. Regardless, the Thorfinn of his dreams remained mute and compliant, and Canute was, if not happy, momentarily sated. 

Slotting Thorfinn’s bony hips into the curve of his palms as if they were made for him, Canute gripped him and pulled him back against himself so they were flush. Being buried in Thorfinn was the only way Canute ever felt like himself any more, free of the weight of the crown, although it was a fantasy gifted solely in sleep. He didn’t know how long he spent fucking Thorfinn, it may have been seconds, an hour, possibly even a week, but in the way of dreams it didn’t truly matter. As Canute came, pressed against Thorfinn’s back, sweating and blissful, he faded back into the dark place that bordered sleep and the waking world.

When Canute awoke, it was to cold sheets and the thin white morning light of early winter; alone, and trapped within a web of his own making.


End file.
